Rosetta@Home Distributed Folding Coming to Xbox 360?

From Gizmodo

Last week I asked Microsoft to bring Folding@Home to the Xbox 360 to add a boatload of computing power to the Alzheimer's fight. Well, Folding@Home isn't the only distributed protein-folding program around, don't-cha know. There's also Rosetta@Home, a program that happened to receive over $10 million from the Gates Foundation for HIV research last year.

Meanwhile, Xbox Live has been opened to developers via the XNA Game Developers Framework for about a year, allowing people to develop programs on their own for the system. Like… folding programs?

When asked about it on the project's message board, head scientist and developer David Baker said that "we have been discussing this idea with Microsoft quite a bit over the past several weeks; I will keep everybody posted."

Iiiiiiinteresting. This quote is from last October, so it's unclear as to what the status of this project is, but we sure hope this rumor has legs. Of course, any serious distributed folding program would be developed outside of the XNA framework, but it's interesting that this is how he responded when asked about XNA specifically. Having legions of PS3s helping to cure Alzheimer's and legions of Xbox 360s helping to cure HIV sounds like something even the most diehard fanboys can get behind. –Adam Frucci

News Source: gizmodo.com